backup tool in LM17 is buggy

[Tom May]

The Linux Mint backup tool as it is part of LM 17 Cinnamon 64bit appearently has some bugs.

I detected the bugs when trying to copy an installation from one machine to another (i.e. trying to clone) by using the approach as it is officially recommended for a system update in a tutorial by Clem. Namely, I saved the list of installed packages and the home folders of all users by using the LM backup tool. Afterwards, I restored both on the other machine.

Unfortunately, the bugs described below make the whole tool unusable and the recommended approach for a system update unpracticable.

1. The list of installed software packages, as it is saved by the LM backup tool, seems to be uncomplete. Therefore, the software packages will not be re-installed completely on the clone or after a system backup. There was no error message. On the contrary, everything seemed to work fine. However, after restoring the software on the clone, some packages were missing. Inspection of the file written by the LM backup tool showed that not all installed packages were listed.

2. When saving files to the backup drive with the option of preserving the structure (i.e. not writing into an archive file) and as well preserving rights and owners, some folders and files are in fact written with "root" as owner and group. That makes the whole backup unusable as you are not able to access those files individually. But that is the idea behind making a backup preserving the structure and avoiding an archive file. Unfortunately, I cannot catch the scheme behind the bug i.e. when does the backup tool write a folder or a file with the correct owner and when with owner "root".

3. Sometimes (i.e. it does not happen always!) the backup tool gives an error message saying it was not able to access some folders or files. However, the message refers to those folders which I have explicitly excluded! If I do not exclude them, there will be no error message.

The backup tool, as it is now, cannot be used for cloning a system or for restoring the personal data after a system update.
An improvement seems to be urgently necessary.

In my case, I needed to use instead the "rsync" command for the home folders and "dpkg-query" for the software list.

Appearently, the backup tool is a special development for LM. May-be it could be an easy way to a well-working backup tool with respect to personal data backup to exchange the actual backup routines by a simple call to the existing "rsync" routine i.e. keeping the LM backup tool as a GUI to rsync only. As well, the actual routines for creating a software list could be replaced by a simple call to the existing "dpkg-query -l" command, again keeping the LM backup tool as a GUI only. Doing so, it would be possible to keep the general approach to updates as it is described in Clem's tutorial.